More than two-thirds of school shootings reported in 2015-16 never happened

In a National Public Radio report, the news group uncovered deeply flawed data published by the U.S. Department of Education. The investigation found that more than two-thirds of school shootings reported to the authorities during one school year did not actually occur.

This spring the U.S. Education Department reported that in the 2015-2016 school year, “nearly 240 schools … reported at least 1 incident involving a school-related shooting.” The number is far higher than most other estimates.

But NPR reached out to every one of those schools repeatedly over the course of three months and found that more than two-thirds of these reported incidents never happened. Child Trends, a nonpartisan nonprofit research organization, assisted NPR in analyzing data from the government’s Civil Rights Data Collection.

We were able to confirm just 11 reported incidents, either directly with schools or through media reports.

In 161 cases, schools or districts attested that no incident took place or couldn’t confirm one. In at least four cases, we found, something did happen, but it didn’t meet the government’s parameters for a shooting. About a quarter of schools didn’t respond to our inquiries.

“When we’re talking about such an important and rare event, [this] amount of data error could be very meaningful,” says Deborah Temkin, a researcher and program director at Child Trends.

Sorry Ray, I think you have this one wrong – it’s not about gun control, it’s about the Administrations wish to arm teachers in school. What better way for DeVos and Trump to argue for arming teachers. How typical of the administration to not question the rise in numbers from pervious years